Government agency releases plans to address data quality

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released plans to ensure that the federal agency's spending is current and high-quality.

A number of measures are being introduced to improve the organization's data quality procedures after the Open Government Directive (OGD) instructed that changes needed to be made.

The EPA's proposal looks in detail at the measures and systems which are to be introduced to tackle the data quality problems which it may face.

However, according to OMB Watch, the document is lacking in a number of areas.

For example, the body claims that the proposals provide little detail as to how the data accuracy goals are to be achieved and falls short of the OGD's aim of ensuring error-free reporting by the end of 2011.

Earlier this year, Rosslyn Analytics said that issues relating to data quality were difficult to address.

The firm stated that because traditionally companies tended to focus on top-line data and ignore their bottom-line spend, problems rarely got solved quickly.